With the World Cup fast approaching, football fever (that’s soccer mania, for our American readers) is taking over fans everywhere, but perhaps nowhere more so than in already football-manic host country Brazil.

One fast food chain there has hit on a football-related promotion far more fun than the usual athlete endorsement:allowing customers to turn their food trays into a 3-D video game and shoot penalty kicks at a smartphone-sized goalie.

For everyone dreaming of the chance to visit North Korea, you’re in luck. There is now an app for that.

The North Korea Travel app, released on Wednesday, promises to be the most comprehensive guide ever created for tourists to the Hermit Kingdom.

The app, which will be available through both the App Store and Google play, will feature information on over 350 locations throughout the country. Each location will feature “Tour Guide Tips” provided by Simon Cockerell, who works in the North Korea travel industry and has visited the country over 120 times.

Playing by ear is truly an enviable skill. To be able to just hear something then play it yourself is almost like a super-power to many a musical layman. With enough time and practice I could probably develop such an ability too, but come on. I got too many ice cream and animal dating games to write about already.

So I rely on computers to do it for me. There are a variety of software applications on desktop computers that can take a song and at least attempt to break it down into its components, but they can be rather complicated and difficult to use. Now Casio has come out with an iOS app called Chordana Viewer that can reverse engineer songs right on your Apple device for piano or guitar.

Soon Japanese otaku will have even less reason to leave their rooms. Mobile software company jig.jp have announced a shopping app dedicated exclusively to anime goods, and with its own moe mascot to make the experience even sweeter!

With the plethora of applications available across all the major platforms, it seems there’s nothing a smartphone app can’t help you with. And now for those who to spend part of their days exploiting the insecurities of people for their own amusement, Yahoo! Japan has released Kisushiyo!, an app that secretly photographs women as they would look when going in for a smooch.

Granted it’s a novelty app that might not appeal to those without a sweet tooth for schadenfruede. However, the story of how this app became available to Android phones everywhere is an interesting look into the state of the internet.

However, when a recent study reported by Bloomberg Japan declared that Japan had overtaken the U.S. in smartphone and tablet app purchases, people we less than enthused leaving comments such as “Japan’s screwed,” and, “This is sad news indeed.”

For pretty much every parent, there will eventually come that awkward day when their child asks questions about where babies come from. Parents have to tread a fine line with the information that impart, at once wanting to preserve their curious progeny’s innocence but also not wanting to send them out into the wild with tales of storks and cabbage patches.

Thanks to Ryo Shirakawa, now there’s a fun way to teach kids about sexual reproduction without actually having to deal with it: Sperm Vs Egg (Seishi Vs Ranshi; localized to Seed and Egg in English) for smartphones.

The first version of Square Enix’s Lady Lora-saving slime-battling RPG, Dragon Quest, is now available on your smartphone…for free! But hurry up and download it fast, it’s only available to the first one million downloaders.

It’s been almost a year since the Windows 8 operating system was released to the general public. Its aim was to combine the convenience of downloadable apps with the familiarity of a PC desktop in a touch-focused environment, giving us what could have been the best of both worlds. Instead, the Win8 app store struggles against its primary competitors, iTunes and the Android app store. It’s doesn’t help that developers focus the majority of their programming prowess on developing apps for the older and more trusted operating systems, iOS and Android.

However, there is one branch of the computer app market where Win8 has a distinct advantage, and that’s its library of highly recognizable rip-offs. Just look at this list of free game apps which make nefarious use of Nintendo’s most popular video game characters!

It seems like everybody and their brother is releasing some kind of promotional app these days. Most of them never really take off, but a noodle chain called Marugame has an app called Marugame’s Photo Shop where they say you can “decorate your photos with tempura”, though why you would want to do so is a little unclear. However, true to Japanese form, it’s turning into quite a hit on Twitter because it is so very bizarre.

With over a billion registered users worldwide, Facebook is the king of online social networking services. In Japan, however, there are signs that its dominance is starting to crumble.

Facebook launched a Japanese version of its website in 2008. Initially, the platform experienced sluggish user growth as it struggled to compete with already established Japanese SNS sites produced by the likes of mixi, Mobage, and GREE. However, after well-known companies in Japan began to use Facebook as a marketing tool, it caught on with the general public and by the end of 2012 had 17.12 million users.

A mere five months later, however, that number has dropped to 13.78 million,a 19.5 percent drop in less than half a year.

“The Legend of Momotaro” is an interactive storybook that introduces readers to the traditional Japanese story about a hero born from a giant peach. The app, created by Ghost Hand Games, manages to teach readers about Japanese culture, language, and legends all in one beautifully illustrated digital picture book that’s now available for free for a limited time only!

Ever wondered what people in Japan are looking at on the internet? No, not porn…well, yeah they’re looking at porn, but we’re not here to talk about that. Let’s take a look at seven apps and services currently trending in Japan. Yes, one of them is meant to be used while you’re on the toilet. Oh, don’t be surprised, it is Japan after all.

Telling the age-old story of a hero born from a giant peach, Ghost Hand Games’ new app The Legend of Momotaro landed on our iPad last weekend. Promising an inspiring interactive experience while telling the classic Japanese tale, we fired it up right away. A couple of hours of reading, listening and screen-tapping later, we were left with no doubt in our minds: technology really can do great things for an old reading experience.

As smartphone usage continues to grow in Japan, more Japanese developers are tinkering with the devices to make apps of their own. And since developer tools and information are made available for free online, just about anyone can break into app development so long as they have an idea and the willingness to learn.

In fact, making a smartphone app is so easy, even a grade-schooler could do it— just look at 12-year-old Gaiya Ohara, Japan’s youngest smartphone developer and sole creator of the award-winning iOS app, Math RPG.

As we all know, part of Starbucks’ appeal is its big menu and many choices, which naturally lead up to customizable orders. Seeing people rattle off all the options that comprise their beverage of choice is almost enough to make you develop an inferiority complex for just wanting a plain coffee.Read More

At first glance, this tech news report seems to be telling us of an intriguing augmented reality app that’s scary good. When you point your camera at an object, it can automatically read your mind about what you’ll want to do next on the internet with respect to that object, like get a coupon for it or research about it on Wikipedia. Which would bring to mind various questions, such as, is it like auto-fill/auto-complete, remembering what you or others have done before, taken a few steps further? Is it selectively taking you to a website that’s ultimately aiming to get your money? Is it inviting you to give up your free will and just be satisfied with the website it saw fit to jump you to? How does it know what you want to do?Read More